


furlong per fortnight

by spqr



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Hallucinations, M/M, Schizophrenia, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, just go with the flow, Перевод на русский | Translation in Russian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 07:53:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8048389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spqr/pseuds/spqr
Summary: Reid knows it’s not a good idea to start talking to your hallucinations, so he just steps around her to the coffee maker and starts a pot.  “Really, Dr. Reid,” Ada continues, as if he’s argued against her, “I’m not sure you really earned that mathematics PhD.  Where do you go getting the idea that insanity precludes you from happiness?”





	furlong per fortnight

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Фарлонг за две недели](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12437181) by [hirasava](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hirasava/pseuds/hirasava)



> Russian: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12437181

Reid likes to think about the desert.At night, he lays on his back in bed with the sheets tangled around his legs and imagines he’s there — cold sand shifting against his skin, breeze whispering over his face, like the vestiges of some ancient epoch, a million dead voices breathing in the dark blue landscape around him.He’s had a hankering for ancient Middle Eastern text these past few months.He’s read everything he can get his hands on: the Bible over and over, _One Thousand and One Nights,_ The Epic of Gilgamesh, the _Masnavi,_ the Vendidad.

 

The words flow through his brain, water over rocks, and he focuses on their soothing cadence as he drifts of, his eyelids heavy, the ceiling fan spinning around and around and around overhead — the flood stems to a stream, and then a trickle, and then nothing — just the noise of millions of miles of dunes, moving all around him.

 

It contradicts the mathematics doctorate that he has hanging on his wall, but what Reid likes most about the archaic primal nomadic early emergence of civilization is their misunderstanding of time.To the bedouins roaming the vast landscapes of Mesopotamia and Persia and Babylonia and Arabia and Israel, 40 days seems forever, 1001 nights is an incomprehensible eternity, there is no alarm clock on the bedside table that reads 03:47.Reid could live his entire life in the desert, he could die there, be reborn, emerge and have the people tell him _you were gone a week_.

 

-illion

 

Reid sleeps best on the jet.Actually, he sleeps best in the car, while Morgan’s driving, long nighttime trips across state lines, streetlights and reststops and trashy 80s country music playing low on the radio — but that’s a rarity, that kind of long-distance roadtrip is something they only have to do every couple of years or so.As far as common scenarios go — he sleeps best on the jet.He thinks it’s because the vibration of the engines is loud enough to drown out his thoughts but quiet enough not to keep him awake. 

 

He thinks it also helps that Morgan is always sitting next to him, but there are a lot of variables so he can’t be certain there’s any sort of causation.His only proven hypothesis is that it feels safe up here — logically, they’re safe at 38,000 feet, aircraft crashes are extremely rare and the only person on this flight he wouldn’t trust with his life is the pilot — existentially, everything seems simpler and less alarming when he blinks awake to find he’s been drooling on Morgan’s shoulder, when he mumbles an apology and gets a teasing smile in response.

 

It’s only two hours, give or take, but it’s better than he’s slept in months.The rest of the team is asleep around them, getting what shuteye they can before they touch down for their latest case in Juneau, but Reid curls his fingers around a styrofoam cup of coffee and listens to the low soothing rumble of Morgan’s voice.

 

“I’ve got to have a boy, at least,” Morgan is saying.The steam from his own coffee cup is curling up around his mouth, and Reid has to entertain his groggy eyes by looking at other things — the bare inch of space between Morgan’s knees and the seatback, the line of Prentiss’ shoulders rising and falling as she sleeps on her side across from them, so he doesn’t fixate.“Hank, after my father.Not short for Henry, either.Just Hank.”

 

“You’re not scared?” Reid asks, quietly so as not to disturb the others.“Statistically, a much lower percentage of people in high-level law enforcement postitions choose to have children — they feel they’re endangering them, just by having them in the first place.I mean, you’ve seen what — “ he stops himself.Social cues.

 

Morgan barely ever gets annoyed at Reid’s bluntness anymore.“No, I’m not,” he says.“I think it’s better to have something, and be scared of losing it, than be so scared in the first place that you never let yourself have it at all.”

 

That’s a nice theory, certainly, but not supportable in all instances.Reid decided when he was nineteen and started getting splitting headaches that he would never have children.Schizophrenia is hereditary — he’s got a 13 percent likelihood of developing the disorder, and even if it never fully presents in him, there’s always the chance that it skips a generation.He saw what it did to his mother and he saw what it did to his family and he knows what it will do to him if it ever gets the chance, and he’s not about to put all that on some other kid.

 

Morgan rubs a hand over his chest, where his heart is.Reid doesn’t think he even notices he’s smiling.

 

-illion

 

Reid wakes up at 05:09 on a Tuesday.He’s got a limp this early in the morning, old wound stiff, and he moves down the hall of his apartment with a hand on the wall, tie undone around his neck, shirt not tucked into his pants yet.The kitchen is small and cluttered with books and unwashed dishes, pale morning light bleeding through blinds pulled over the small window above the sink to outline the edges of the stacks.To outline the elegant line of a Victorian-era skirt, dark curls piled up artfully to frame a pale soft indistinct face, long eyelashes.

 

The woman standing in front of his microwave turns to him.Her corset turns into a loose lacy fabric to cover her shoulders and collarbone, clasped around her neck, but Reid can see skin through the netting, can see the stark curl of the mark on over her heart, from the curve of her breast up over her left shoulder.

 

“Dr. Reid,” she says, in a soft British accent.“I’m having a little trouble understanding your logic.”

 

From Ada, Countess of Lovelace, it’s a rather scathing insult.Reid knows it’s not a good idea to start talking to your hallucinations, so he just steps around her to the coffee maker and starts a pot.“Really, Dr. Reid,” Ada continues, as if he’s argued against her, “I’m not sure you really earned that mathematics PhD.Where do you go getting the idea that insanity precludes you from happiness?”

 

Frankly, Reid’s just glad he’s hallucinating someone who can’t possibly be real.If it were Morgan standing in his kitchen, taking up space, identical mark curled over one shoulder, Reid doesn’t think he could just ignore him.Especially not if he sidled up to his back, like Ada does, and said, like she says, “You ought to tell them, you know.It’s much easier to go through this if you’re not alone.And you are now — alone, I mean.”She turns her head and presses a kiss to the side of his neck, and it _feels_ real, but it isn’t.It never will be.

 

-illion

 

Most of the online connection databases take anonymous photos starting at age sixteen.They don’t run identities through any state resources, though — so most kids put their marks up online as soon as they’ve got internet access, lying about their age and changing it to fit later.Reid doesn’t like computers, he doesn’t like the internet, he doesn’t really feel right putting a picture of something that personal online, and he’s almost certain that no one’s going to be eager to find out their soulmate is a skinny big-mouthed hallucinatory super-nerd, anyways.

 

At age 13 he’s got nothing but the numbers for company.At 17 he loses his virginity with his shirt still on to a 30 year old fellow doctoral student who wants Reid to list him as a contributor on the theoretical physics paper he’s about to publish.At 22 he earns his badge and he earns friends along with it.

 

Reid’s not so keen on taking his clothes off.His mark is pretty extensive — you can’t miss it — and he prefers to keep it to himself, because if no one ever sees it, no one will ever figure out they’re his soulmate, no one will ever have to deal with this but him.No one will have to watch him wake up and not know what day it is, what month it is, no one will have to listen to him scream himself hoarse over things that aren’t really there, no one will have to walk into their bedroom and find the walls covered in nonsense scribbles that he thinks are the key to the universe. 

 

-illion

 

“You want to talk about it?” Morgan asks, softly.They’re in the middle of nowhere, South Dakota, the only light leaking under the door from the hall into their hotel room, just barely enough for Reid to see that Morgan is leaning over him, the other bed vacated.Reid’s heart is still racing, his chest is still heaving, but he manages to calm his voice enough that it won’t be alarming and panicked when he says —

 

“It was just a dream.I’m fine.Sorry I woke you.”

 

He thinks he does a pretty good job of bottling down the screaming terror that his body still thinks he’s in the middle of, but Morgan sits down on the bed next to him and says, “You don’t have to be fine with me, kid.”

 

Reid wants to pull _One Thousand and One Nights_ out of his bag and run his fingers over the pages.He wants to pull Morgan down next to him and see if his partner’s arms around him will make him stop shaking, he wants to be able to trust something other than his own mind, but he knows that splitting his loyalties like that is dangerous.He starts to say, “It was just — “ but then he cuts himself off, because how can he explain this —

 

How can he tell Morgan,  _I think I’m going crazy.I’m seeing things that aren’t there.I’m afraid I’m going to get someone killed, but this job is all I have.I can’t go to the psychiatrist because I can’t take meds because I’m an addict.I just dreamed that I was on the battlefield at Antietam, I did a report on decisive Civil War victories in third grade and all the pictures are still queued up in my head like a vivid memory, the whole team was there and the whole team died and I’m not sure if we turned the lights on whether we’d still be in Union colors._

 

Reid swallows hard.“It was nothing,” he says.“I’m fine now.”But he feels Morgan’s hand on his face, careful but pressing, and it shocks a laugh out of him, a strange sound that sounds manic even to his own ears.“You should — “ he swallows again, and he’s not doing very well controlling how _pathetic_ his voice is.“You should go back to bed.We’ve got a lot of work to do in the morning, I’ll just go down to the lobby and start on that topographical — “

 

“Reid,” Morgan says.“Calm that brain down, pretty boy.What’s eating you?”

 

The sheets rustle in the darkness as Reid pulls himself upright, so there faces are mere inches apart, and he can see the gentle grainy touch of the light on Morgan’s face, on the concerned wrinkle of his forehead.Morgan’s hand slides to his shoulder, and tightens, and how could Reid tell anyone this, how could he expect someone else to carry this with him every day, how could he put this on Morgan, but he does.He says, “I think I’m going crazy.”

 

-illions

 

Reid follows Tuntankhamun through the underground in New York.He’s off duty for the night, eighteen hours until the next killing is due, and he takes three trains without even looking at the destinations, without even registering the stops, just holding the gaze of the small Egyptian boy in a loin cloth and dark eye makeup sitting on the empty seat across from him.He follows Tutankhamun to a warehouse by the water, and he follows him inside, and he finds a meat locker, and he puts latex gloves on and he runs his fingers over the spines of the victims, trophies.

 

He never knows what to tell the team, when this sort of thing happens.Invariably, he ends up making up something that involves a lot of higher math that none of them will ever understand, maybe with some medieval reverences thrown in for good measure.It makes him feel sick, lying to them, but he doesn’t know what else to do.

 

After King Tut, he doesn’t hallucinate for months.It comes and goes — it lulls him into a false sense of security and then waits around a corner with a sledgehammer to hit him in the gut, and three and a half months later the team is in Mexico City looking after the murders of American students and he squints up at the bright blue sky and sees a stream of Greek letters shimmering hazy between the buildings.He grabs Morgan’s arm, and pulls him away from the spattered blood and the dead coed, and he says, “I can’t explain, but trust me, I know where to go.”

 

It’s not precognition.Logically, he knows that.He knows there’s no mysterious supernatural power festering in his head or sitting on his shoulder, feeding him clues about cases.It’s just his own brain processing information in ways that his analytical mind isn’t currently equipped to process, it’s just that there’s a dam that’s blocking all the facts from flowing through, and it’s leaking in weird places, and the only way to string all the leaks together is _alpha beta delta gamma epsilon_ streaming through the steep streets of the slums of Mexico City.

 

-illions

 

Reid thinks it’s strange that he doesn’t feel any pain.It’s shock, he knows, because he can taste blood in his mouth, like it’s coming up his throat, and he can feel something warm and sticky spreading across the front of his shirt.It’s only shock, and it will hurt soon enough, so he might as well enjoy the numbness while it lasts.He coughs, and feels more blood speckle his chin.Everything around him is very loud and very far-off.The sun is going down, and DC is safe for now, and Reid is actually sort of glad that he’s not going to have to live to see his brain deteriorate.

 

Suddenly, Morgan is there, blocking out the sky.He puts pressure on Reid’s chest, and it’s such a sharp stab of pain that Reid gasps, and suddenly everything is back in screaming color, the pain and the panicked noise of DC foot traffic all around them, the hard surface of the sidewalk underneath him, Morgan’s low determined mantra of, “No, no, not today, come on, Reid, not today, you’re not leaving me today, come on, kid — “

 

Reid grabs the front of his shirt, leaving fingerprints of blood.“Is this real?” he rasps.“Am I actually dying?”

 

Morgan’s used to it by now — Reid leaning close at crime scenes and muttering things like _do you see that, is there really, can you hear, did that guy actually say he was a CIA agent —_ but he shakes his head and says, “No, Reid, no.This is real, but you aren’t going to die.I’m not going to _let you_ , baby — “

 

-illions

 

Reid likes to immerse himself in forgotten eras when forty days was an eternity because sometimes it feels like forty days is all he has left to live in the real world.Even that much time might be an overly optimistic estimation —

 

He wakes up underwater.The blip of his heart monitor is muffled like all sounds are underwater, and when he turns his head to look out the window, his movements are slow, easy and weightless.Outside, everything is normal, but inside the hospital — the room is filled with clear blue water, the halls outside are filled with water, the nurses clothes are ballooned around them, Reid’s long hair floats around his head, he feels himself starting to lift away from the bed, he takes a breath and feels liquid flow down his throat into his lungs, but he doesn’t choke.

 

Morgan is asleep in a chair in the corner, feet up on the lower shelf of a crash cart.Reid wants to say something to him — he opens his mouth, and it’s full of water, just like the whole world, but he tries anyway, and the sound of his voice gets out, travels a meandering path through the water, “Hey — Morgan.”

 

He watches Morgan start to stir, watches him blink and start to open his eyes, turning to look at Reid —

 

Their eyes meet, and all the water crashes to the floor.It’s loud, a sudden cascade, it slaps down all throughout the hospitalin a wave, leaves Reid dripping wet and gasping while his lungs reacclimate to breathing air instead of liquid — Morgan stands up and rushes over to him, hands going to Reid’s shoulders, and he says, “Breathe, kid, just breathe — “ and Reid looks around and there’s nothing — the floors are dry, his clothes are dry.

 

The IV’s prick in his wrists when he reaches up to grab Morgan’s arms.He matches the tempo of his lungs to his partner’s careful breathing, and he lets his mind run away and take refuge in the constants — the blinking green numbers of his heartrate and blood pressure and blood oxygen levels, the soothing rumble of Morgan’s voice, the sharp antiseptic smell that’s come to mean _you’re not dead_ , the analytical part of his mind that’s firing back to life one piston at a time, telling him that there’s no way the whole hospital was just filled with water. 

 

He remembers tackling the unsub, getting the bomb away from him, hurtling it over the rail into the Potomac.He remembers the crack of a gunshot, and Morgan’s hands inside him.“How — “ his voice breaks, and Morgan goes to bring him a cup of water, which he drinks in one.“How long have I been out?”

 

“Amost a week,” Morgan says.“It was touch-and-go there, for a while.”He looks more tired than Reid’s ever seen him, dark bags under his eyes and a sort of sticking slur to his words, and he sits on the bed next to Reid, takes his hand and holds it firmly, like he’s holding Reid there.“I thought I lost you a few times, pretty boy.”

 

Reid blinks hard and looks away from him.“You should be back with the team,” he says.“I’m sure they’ve got another case by now.They need you.You shouldn’t have stayed with me — “

 

“Reid,” Morgan says, in that level, patient way that means he’s perfectly content to wait for Reid to stop babbling and actually _look_ at him.“There wasn’t a chance in hell I was gonna leave your side.There’s not a chance in hell I’m _ever_ gonna leave your side, so you better get used to it.”

 

Reid frowns at him.Morgan just smiles and drops a kiss on top of Reid’s head, in his hair, then on his forehead.“I gotta show you something,” Morgan murmurs.“I was in the ambulance with you, kid.I saw your heart stop, and I saw it restart.I also saw this.”He lays a hand over Reid’s heart, and then he reaches up and pulls the collar of his henley away from his own shoulder, so Reid can see it — the asymmetrical infinity symbol that curls over his chest.

 

Morgan’s really close to his face, breathing the same warm space of air that Reid is, but he makes sure his brain stays focused on his heart monitor, tangible and certain.He lets Morgan hold his head with big hands, lets him press one long kiss to Reid’s lips, lets him pull back and come in for another, and everything feels safe and beautiful, but —

 

The next time Morgan comes up for air, Reid says, “I know.I’ve known for a while, actually.”

 

-illions

 

Morgan won’t leave him.He makes himself a bed on Reid’s couch and refuses to leave, sleeps with two sidearms on the coffee table in front of him, and Reid wants to tell him that it’s a bad idea to have firearms in the same apartment as a crazy person, but that would just seem hypocritical of him — he always has his gun, it’s never far from reach, but what’s changed is that Morgan’s here, now.He helps Reid get around and he distracts Reid when he refuses to take his pain meds and he comes running in when Reid wakes up screaming and he just — stays. 

 

Reid has a great wall of arguments built up around the part of him that wants to ask Morgan to come to bed with him.He tries giving a voice to every one of them, _I don’t want you to go through what I went through, I don’t want you to see me like this, you want a family, you want kids and a house in the suburbs, you deserve so much better than anything I’m ever going to be able to give you, there’s someone_ whole _out there who’s going to love you even though your marks don’t match, this is only going to hurt both of us really fucking bad._

 

But Morgan just grabs his hyperactive hands and presses them between both of his own and says, “Reid, as long as I’ve known you, I wanted it to be you.I hoped it would be you, all these years.”

 

-illions

 

The end is simple.He finds Ada, Countess of Lovelace having English tea at his kitchen table at 02:17, when he pads in gracelessly, looking for his copy of the _Masnavi_.Morgan is snoring on the couch, somewhere nearby in the apartment, and Ada looks up at Reid by nonexistent candlelight and says crisply, “Dr. Reid.I cannot allow you to carry on like this.”She pours him a cup of tea, and he notices that the soulmark has gone from her porcelain skin.“You have been hurting yourself your whole life, and I have allowed it.But I cannot allow you to hurt your soulmate.”

 

He wants to break the rule — no speaking to your hallucinations — he wants to say _I’m not hurting him.The last thing I would ever want to do is hurt him_.But the rule is there for a reason, and he’s still enjoying his forty nights in the desert.“SSA Morgan is not going to leave you, Dr. Reid,” Ada continues.“So let him in.It’s only logical.”

 

Walking unaided, Reid’s chest twinges uncomfortably, but it’s nothing of the feverish unbearable pain that kept him awake at night weeks ago.He feels Ada’s eyes on him as he walks around the kitchen table, around a stack of books balanced precariously on one chair, into the equally-cramped space of his living room, where his couch takes up most of the available space, a bookshelf and a radio — _no TV, why am I not surprised,_ Morgan had said.The strength of Morgan’s breathing in the dark is enough to guide him, and Reid folds slowly to one knee in front of him.

 

The candlelight is gone from the kitchen, and the Countess of Lovelace with it.Reid lets some of the tension bleed out of his shoulders, and reaches out a hand until he finds the warmth of Morgan’s body, his shoulder.“Morgan.”

 

He feels Morgan stir under his fingers, feels the moment he comes fully awake.“Reid?” he says. “You alright, baby?”

 

“I — “ Reid tries to say.He feels waves and waves of years and years of pushed-off relief breaking past the levees and crashing over him, and he has to blink back tears, oddly.“I think I’m just scared.”Morgan reaches out and pulls him closer, so he’s leaning on the couch, and once it starts, he can’t stop it all coming out.“I’m fucking terrified, actually.I’m scared of my own brain, because it’s always been the only thing I had and now it’s broken — and I _know_ this disease.I’ve seen it before.I’ve seen what it can do, and I — “ his voice breaks.“I don’t want to let it hurt us.”

 

He feels his hands curl into fists, knotted in the front of Morgan’s tee shirt, but he’s not in control.He can’t do anything to make himself let go.“I always told myself if I never found my soulmate it would be better.I would just deal with it myself, and my soulmate would be able to live their life without me.But then — it was you.”

 

It’s Morgan.It’s that safe, insulated feeling of sleeping on the jet.It’s their eyes meeting in the field and Reid immediately knowing what his partner’s thinking, what he’s about to do.It’s big hands on Reid’s skinny body, in Reid’s chest, holding the lifeblood in his heart by sheer force of will.It’s a deep voice drawling _kid, pretty boy, genius, Reid, calm that brain down, I wanted it to be you, trust me, I’m not leaving you._

 

Reid feels Morgan move towards him in the dark.Feels Morgan’s arms careful around him, feels him press his face into Reid’s neck, feels the vibration of his voice, “It’s all gonna be alright, baby.”Lets himself drop his head on Morgan’s shoulder, the one where his mark is, and melt into him.Lets himself believe, even for just a moment, that Morgan’s telling the truth, that those aren’t just nothing words, that it really _is_ going to be okay.That he’ll stop seeing equations in the clouds, stop dreaming of the bones of a murder vics like they’re voodoo relics.

 

-illions

 

Reid sleeps best in the afternoon, wrapped up in the sheets and in Morgan.Morgan lays like he’s worried Reid will slip away, with his arms around him and their faces close together, half on top of him, pressing Reid down into the pillows and the mattress.Reid finds he doesn’t mind it, likes the weight of Morgan on top of him.He sleeps dreamless when they’ve spent their whole day off in bed, when Morgan has spent hours sucking bruises into every inch of his skin, when their clothes are still in a mess strewn across the floor of Reid’s bedroom.

 

He wakes up before Morgan, and traces the line of his mark with heavy, sleep-weighted fingers.The afternoon sunlight comes in orange through the blinds pulled over his window, and Reid lets the feeling of Morgan’s bare skin against his ground him, like some rumor of 1001 nights still to come.Some theory yet unproven, but supported.

 

Morgan wakes slowly.He props himself on one elbow, and leans in for a drawn-out, closed-mouth kiss, steady and unhurried, his hands sliding into Reid’s mussed hair, down his side to his hip.Reid pulls back just enough that he can say, “Good afternoon,” against Morgan’s lips, and he gets an easy smile and, “Hey, pretty boy,” in response — he pulls Morgan back down to taste his smile, and it contradicts his entire worldview, but he thinks at times like this that he doesn’t really care if this is real or not.  Eternity is an ancient idea from a bygone era, and all he has  _now_ are moments.

 


End file.
